Febeuabt 18, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



151 



materials in our midst for anthropological 

 studies of practical value to our nation is a 

 mistake whose consequences will be far-reach- 

 ing in their disaster. " Legislation which ig- 

 nores the facts of variation and heredity must 

 ultimately lead to national deterioration," said 

 the British hirth-rate commission in 1917.' 

 Every day henceforth in the life of the Amer- 

 ican nation anthropological data should be 

 recorded just as 'our Treasury Department 

 daily keeps its fingers on the financial pulse 

 of the nation. In leaving this point I quote 

 as a pertinent scientific fact of to-day a sen- 

 tence from Pearson's recent address at Car- 

 diff above referred to : " The future lies with 

 the nation that most truly plana for the fu- 

 ture, that studies most accurately the factors 

 which will improve the racial qualities of fu- 

 ture generations either physically or men- 

 tally.-'^ 



. We come now to the first of the two prob- 

 lems vital to America which we wish espe- 

 cially to consider. 



Mr. Frederick A. Wallis, Immigration Com- 

 missioner at the port of ISTew York, recently 

 said that the greatest problem before America 

 to-day is the Immigration Problem. The 

 whole nation is coming to a realization of the 

 truth of this statement. The seriousness of 

 the problem is equalled only by our lack of 

 data, our lack of methods and technique, our 

 general ignorance in dealing with it. Ferrero, 

 the Italian historian, recently said: 



My first surprise [on coming to the United 

 States], and a very great one it was, arose from 

 my examination at close quarters, of the policy 

 pursued by the United States in dealing with the 

 immense hordes of immigrants, who yearly pour 

 into their harbors from all parts of the Old World. 



This question was of especial interest, as he 

 said, " to a historian of Home, like myself, to 

 whom history has taught the great internal 

 difficulties which were caused in every ancient 



8 Pages 139-140, Guglielmo Ferrero, "Ancient 

 Rome and Modern America," 1914. 



« Page 45, ' ' The Declining Birth-rate by the 

 National Birth-rate Commission," London, 1917. 



^ Page 376, "Institutes of Anthropology," by 

 Professor Karl Pearson, Sciencb, October 22, 1920. 



state by the meioipoi or peregrini [i.e., 

 aliens]."' This great problem of the admis- 

 sion, the distribution, and the assimilation of 

 the immigrant in America is at base anthropo- 

 logical. 



Ethnic groups differ one from another. It 

 is commonly supposed to be true that their 

 differences are only " skin deep," but you and 

 I know that ethnic groups differ beneath the 

 skin. We know that the processes of pigment 

 metabolism are so unerring and persistent 

 that patches of skin taken from one person 

 and grafted on another take on the proportion 

 of pigmentation natural to the " stock " or 

 seat on which the transplanted skin lives. We 

 know also that ethnic differences are so much 

 more than only " skin deep " that ovaries 

 transplanted from one person to another per- 

 son would reproduce children of their own 

 kind without influence by the person who 

 served as " stock " or seat for the transplanted 

 ovaries. There are no experiments of this sort 

 known to me, but what has been proved true 

 with other animals would without question be 

 true of human animals. Thus there is scien- 

 tific reason to speak of different " breeds " of 

 people whose differing physical characteristics 

 are to-day due to the factors of heredity resi- 

 dent in the reproductive germ cells. Ethnic 

 differences are not simply " skin deep." They 

 are germinal. They begin at the functional 

 innermost center of the person, and they con- 

 tinue through to the outside. The man who 

 runs sees the outside differences between 

 breeds of people. The anthropologist knows 

 they begin inside in the seeds of the breeds. 



Out of the physical man grows the psychic 

 man. As out of these different physical char- 

 acteristics of the different breeds of people 

 come the psychic characteristics of those 

 breeds of people, it should be expected that 

 the reactions of the different breeds of people 

 would exhibit differences. The practical 

 handler of peoples knows such is the case — 

 whether he is an administrator of colonies, a 

 policeman in any large cosmopolitan city, or 

 boss of a gang of mixed " foreigners " on any 

 American railway job. At the present moment 



